The Ultimate Checklist for Corporate Event Planning in the 21st Century

Planning a corporate event is so much more stressful than planning a normal event with family and friends. However, if it’s executed properly, it can be so much fun for everyone. People do say that you can never be too organised! It’s better to over-plan rather than not plan at all. The event you’re planning can be a seminar, a conference or even just a customer appreciation day but it does need the same amount of organisation. It is true that the success of your event will be thanks to the details. Therefore, here at the ThunderQuote headquarters, we have collected a few tips and tricks for a corporate event planning checklist that you can use to ensure your event is the talk of the town!

First Things First : Ensure you figure out these things first beforehand.

#1 Who Is Your Target Audience

You would need to determine who you’re planning for exactly. You need a clear definition for your target audience. With these decision, you can consequently start planning for the people you are planning to invite. You can then decide on a location, theme and even the budget as well. A more structured approach like this will allow you to stay focused on ensuring you achieve specific goals that has been set for this event.

#2 Start Listing Things Down

Nothing beats taking a piece of paper (or using your phone) to create lists of the things you need for this corporate event. Deciding to host an event is a lot of work and having a list will make sure that you won’t overlook things. This event will portray your company brand and therefore it needs to be executed perfectly.

#3 Watch Out For Other Events

Every other day you’ll hear about some event going on somewhere else. This brings us to the point that you should be looking out for other events that will happen around the same time you are planning your event. This is to ensure you have a general idea of when to set the date for your event. In addition to that, you would want as many people as possible to attend your event, if you plan an event around other events, participants might be more inclined to choose between two events. Also be vary about public holidays and just the holiday period in general. No one wants to attend a work event so close to the holidays.

#4 Be Aware Of Your Limitations

Due to time and money constraints, you would need to be more diligent with your event planning. It will all depend on how soon you are planning to throw your event and also the budget that you are looking to spend. If it’s an event that is going to happen in a shorter time frame, decide to throw a more intimate event and if you have more time and money, try to start planning 3 months in advance. This is to ensure you get everything locked and loaded before the big day.

#5 What Are Your Goals? Planning a corporate event must have it’s own goals and reasons to why you’re throwing this event. You need to make sure you list down and confirm these goals before the planning starts to ensure that you know exactly what you are trying to achieve with this event and you should start planning your event with those exact goals in mind. The goals are set to be the nucleus of your event thus creating a cohesive and well-thought out event.

What’s Next? Money, Money, Money

The dreaded subject has to be talked about and discussed sooner or later. Money, little pieces of paper or numbers on a screen that makes the world go round. Everything requires money. Especially a corporate event. However, the good thing to note is that it isn’t your hard earned money that is being spent but rather the company’s money. But, it is still money and should be budgeted properly.

It doesn’t matter if you are a small startup company or a Fortune 500 company, everything costs money and it would be wise of you and the team you might have helping you to sit down and come up with a budget. You might already have a working budget to begin with given to you by your bosses or one that you came up with yourself. Now, with that initial budget, you need to start planning the event out and start allocating the money to each part of the event.

Come up with a plan! If you think you need to find more money for the event, it is good to know that most events are paid for by ticket sales and sponsors. So come up with a plan to get that up and running as well. It would be smart to start rallying up your sponsors or start by surveying the amount of tickets you could sell before picking out the venue and sign contracts for the event. It’s better to be safe than sorry!

Next Is : Work Delegation

Planning a corporate event is a huge task. It doesn’t matter if it’s a small event or a big one. It takes a lot of effort and flawless coordination to make sure everything goes on the way it’s planned. The first thing you should do is delegate the responsibilities. Someone you think is highly capable of handling the stress should be the leader. However, it’s smarter to have more people on the team to ensure that everything gets done. Having few people might be good so that things don’t go haywire but it shouldn’t be too little that the workload becomes too great for one person to handle.

You should separate every part of planning the event to different sections of people. The venue is very important so hand that over to someone who is good at interior design or someone who has an eye for spaces. Let the foodie take over the responsibility of getting the caterers. Let someone who loves music get the entertainment and let the boss get industry leaders to come in and give speeches for the event. Make sure everyone is in their element so that they will have fun even though they’re planning the event.

One word – social media. Remember to either outsource a social media team or use your in-house marketing team to cover the entire event. This will allow your event to garner more attention and more attention is always a good thing at events like these.

Lastly, putting it all together.

Once you have everyone at their delegated spots, let the proper planning and booking begin. The most important things you need to get booked early on is the venue and the caterers. No one wants an event in a crappy venue that serves bad food. You will be the talk of the town for months, and not for a good reason either.

This is when you should start making appointments with vendors and meet them at the locations you have chosen for your venue. You would definitely have to go there in person. Pictures are never accurate. You would need to discuss rental fees and what’s included in the whole package. Ask questions like :

Will you have the venue for yourselves the entire day?

Are you allowed to go in and decorate the night before?

Do you provide tables and chairs?

Do you have a sound system?

Do you offer security?

These questions are crucial for your event as it will give you a baseline for the amount of things you would need to prepare for.

After you’ve found the caterer, the MC, the decorations, the sound and visual system, it is time to send out your invitations for the event. Or you could have sent it beforehand and expect your RSVP’s at this time. It is also a good time to start marketing your event on social media if you want it to be an open event rather than a private one.

These are most of the items that we feel should be on the ultimate event planning checklist. It is a mesh of a little of everything that goes into making a great and successful corporate event. Let ThunderQuote assist you in locating the best event planners out there in the whole of Singapore. Visit our website to get 5 free quotes fast!

ThunderQuote is the most comprehensive business services portal in Singapore, Australia and ASEAN , where hundreds of thousands of dollars of procurement contracts are sourced every month by major companies like Singapore Press Holdings, National Trade Union Congress and more.